Speech by Bolivia at UN Dialogue on Harmony with Nature

Speech by Ambassador Pablo Solón, Permanent Representative of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the United Nations, on the Occasion of the General Assembly Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature

New York, April 20th, 2011

Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables, once wrote: “How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen.”

We are here today to attempt to have a dialogue not just among States, but also with nature. Although we often forget it, human beings are a force in nature. In reality, we are all a product of the same Big Bang that created the universe, although some only see wood for the fire when they walk through the forest.

These three questions are the point of departure for our discussion today:

First, what is nature? Is it a thing, a source of resources, a system, a home, a community of living and interdependent beings?

Second, are there rules in nature? Are there natural laws that govern its integrity, interrelationships, reproduction and transformation?

And third, are we as States and as a society recognizing, respecting and making sure that the rules of nature prevail?
The philosopher Francis Bacon said that we cannot command nature except by obeying her. The time for superheroes and superpowers is coming to an end. Nature cannot be submitted to the wills of the laboratory. Science and technology are capable of everything including destroying the world itself.

It is time to stop and reaffirm the precautionary principle in the face of geo-engineering and all artificial manipulation of the climate. All new technologies should be evaluated to gauge their environmental, social and economic impacts. The answer for the future lies not in scientific inventions but in our capacity to listen to nature.

The green economy considers it necessary, in the struggle to preserve biodiversity, to put a price on the free services that plants, animals and ecosystems offer humanity: the purification of water, the pollination of plants by bees, the protection of coral reefs and climatic regulation.

According to the green economy, we have to identify the specific functions of ecosystems and biodiversity that can be made subject to a monetary value, evaluate their current state, define the limits of those services, and set out in economic terms the cost of their conservation to develop a market for environmental services.

For the green economy, capitalism’s mistake is not having fully incorporated nature as part of capital. That is why its central proposal is to create “environmentally friendly” business and green jobs and in that way limit environmental degradation by bringing the laws of capitalism to bear on nature.

In other words, the transfusion of the rules of market will save nature. This proposal of the green economy is absolutely false.

This is not a hypothetical debate, since the third round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization will be about the trade in services and environmental goods.

Humanity finds itself at a crossroads: we can commericalize nature through the green economy or recognize the rights of nature.

Why should we only respect the laws of human beings and not those of nature? Why do we call the person who kills his neighbor a criminal, but not he who extinguishes a species or contaminates a river? Why do we judge the life of human beings with parameters different from those that the guide the life of the system as a whole if all of us, absolutely all of us, rely on the life of the Earth System?

Is there no contradiction in recognizing only the rights of the human part of this system while all the rest of the system is reduced to a source of resources and raw materials – in other words, a business opportunity?

To speak of equilibrium is to speak of rights for all parts of the system. It could be that these rights are not identical for all things, since not all things are equal. But to think that only humans should enjoy privileges while other living things are simply objects is the worst mistake humanity has ever made. Decades ago, to talk about slaves as having the same rights as everyone else seemed like the same heresy that it is now to talk about glaciers or rivers or trees as having rights.

Nature is ruthless when it goes ignored.

It is incredible that it is easier to imagine the destruction of nature than to dream about overthrowing capitalism.

Albert Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, not because of those who look on and do nothing.”
We have not come here to watch a funeral.

Email Subscription

3 comments

The people who instigated the green economy about a decade ago are mostly the same ones who’d denied the significance of climate destabilization for around three decades before that.
When they could no longer get away with denying this significance, they decided to make money from it instead.
Rather than dealing with it forthrightly, they go for quick profits.
Thus they pretend to believe that wind and solar are the best replacements for fossil fuels merely because they’re already geared up to manufacture them.
So the UN can play a helpful role now by providing start-up money for certain immensely beneficial applications within the alternate-energy fields of cold fusion, zero point and advanced hydrogen/water.
These applications then should be manufactured in developing nations and made available to people there at cost as part of reparations paid by developed nations in penance for their massively destructive war against nature.
One good way to learn just how beneficial these applications can be is to read “Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World” by Jeane Manning and Joel Garbon.
Yours for all our relations,
Keith Lampe aka Pondo and Ro-Non-So-Te
Co-founder, US environmental movement in
1969, Living Creatures Associates in 1972,
All-Species Projects in 1978 and founder, US
Pro-Democracy Movement in 1991
Vilcabamba, Ecuador

Thanks for posting this here and to Bolivia for bringing a very welcome breath of fresh air to the United Nations General Assembly. You can see and hear the webcast of Ambassador Solón’s Speech – along with other inspiring and insightful speeches and responses from participants at the General Assembly Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature, along with more information about the event and the speakers at http://www.un.org/en/ga/president/65/initiatives/HarmonywithNature.html Vandana Shiva’s speech was especially inspirational.

I always struggle to believe what politicians say, especially during speeches at the UN. He makes some really good initial points though, about how we must respect nature and really take it into consideration before we do so many things that destroy it.